BAREFOOT FOOTBALL

Lauren Morimoto is living in Los Angeles, but her roots extend to Kaua‘i where her parents grew up in the Hanamaulu Camps.

Attending the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) annual conference last year, Morimoto took in the session on Hawaiian sports where she was exposed to research on Duke Kahanamoku and his cultural significance as well as a survey on Hawaiian sport history.

Remembering her dad’s tales of the Hanamaulu Camp, Morimoto realized there was more going on beside swimming, surfing, and diving.

Following the conference, Morimoto came across an article on Herman Wedemeyer who found football success on the mainland, and rooted within that piece was the mention of the Barefoot Leagues.

Upon asking her parents about Barefoot football, Morimoto discovered two of her uncles and one “fake” uncle played. But, that was about the extent of the history Morimoto could find as searches on library databases and the Internet came up empty.

“When I realized that this history – of how boys and men on the plantation played – was going to be lost if something didn’t write it down – I got excited about the possibility of putting together an oral history of the barefoot league,” Morimoto said.

“Along with finding out about the structure and organization, I was more interested in discovering what barefoot football meant to the men who played and its role in the plantation/cannery communities on Kaua‘i.”

Since there were no books or articles readily available, Morimoto set out to access local sources starting with archived issues of The Garden Island.

The yellowed pages of TGI teased Morimoto who began to get a general sense of schedule, nature of the game, and who was participating, the information only serving to whet her appetite for more.

“I knew that to get to my questions about the barefoot leagues – about community, identity, meaning — I needed to speak to former players,” she said as she started penning an itinerary that would bring her back to Kaua‘i for a visit with her uncle Richard Nagoshi of Kalaheo, and the three names she came up with during her research.

The trip took place in early March, and with the help of her uncle, Morimoto discovered she had run out of time after talking with 17 former players, her final nights spent at her uncle’s Kalaheo residence where she arranged for an informal gathering of the players she had come to meet.

This trip only served to whet her growing appetite to find out more, and Morimoto says that as the scope of her research grows, she will be presenting a paper at the NASSH 2004 which will take place in Asilomar, Calif.

Spurred on by the conversations she had while on her short visit, Morimoto plans to expand her research, and eventually write a book on the barefoot leagues of Kaua‘i — something that she said was heartily agreed on by the players she talked to.

“I think that it would validate their experience as being something more than just having fun and playing ball – even if those aspects were a big part of barefoot football,” Morimoto said.

Plans are in the works for a return trip for this Californian who wants to organize a reunion of the former players since the last reunion was held in 1982.